Turn your favourite thick veggie sausage into a luxurious wellington. Excellent with your favourite plant based gravy! A great choice for a festive centrepiece.
My favourite for this is the Veggie White Pudding from Clonakilty. Slightly drier than the meat based original, but equally as tasty!
A good quality puff pastry is also needed, usually found in the freezer section at the supermarket. If you are vegan, double-check the label as some may have butter or other dairy.
A lot of the flavour for the wellington comes from the duxelles - chopped mushrooms and onions, fried with some herbs and a pinch of salt. You fry the mix until the water from the mushrooms has cooked off.
Once the duxelles is cooked, put it aside to cool a little, then use the same pan to brown the sausage on all sides.
Slice a sheet of pastry across its width into two halves. On one half, put a layer of duxelles and lay the sausage on this. Build up the rest of the duxelles around the sausage, as evenly as possible.
Lay the other half of the pastry over the ingredients, fold over the edges and use a fork to seal around. This may look a bit thick, but it creates some lovely extra cooked pastry to eat with the gravy! Use the same fork to prick holes all over the top which lets out steam. Brush the pastry with some oil, melted butter, or an egg wash.
Roast at about 200C for around 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Serve it hot with some veg and gravy.
Update!
For Christmas I went with a wellington containing two Clonakilty white puddings!
I used a similar amount of mushroom and onion for the Duxelles, but added in some good handfuls of spinach that I had wilted and then squeezed most of the water out of. It was then chopped and mixed well into the Duxelles.
I was also a bit more precise with the pastry and then had some leftover to make an extra lattice over the main pastry. I also added a squirt of agave into the oil that I used to brush the pastry, which helps in the browning.